I'll be back...

I' sitting in the PDX airport right now... this is the view out the window at my gate. Its boring waiting for flights when they make us show up so early in advance... but the internet access is spot-on so I am playing around online. I thought I'd leave a little blog entry to say I'll be back next week. I've got family visits planned for this week. A baby and a wedding. We are flying out today and back on Sunday.

And I just have to add a little side-note that cracks me up personally... the security checkpoint here in PDX was pumping out loud relaxing music, soothing contemporary stuff - the attempt of subliminal mind control to keep people calm and patient was awesome! Its like the roller coaster of subliminal messages that movie theaters play before the film starts and assures that you will want to consume popcorn and candy while watching that movie. I love it. So I asked the security lady who was handing us back our shoes and such if the music made a difference and she laughed and said unfortunately NO. Ah well... I liked the intentions.

Magically as soon as I walked away from the security checkpoint I couldn't hear the music anymore, they really have pumped it specifically into that area where people are sitting around with their pants falling down, looking for their belts and shoes... emotionally frail, their hair tossled from the air-puffer bomb detecting box and their small toiletries in clear plastic bags strewn around outside their bags. I'd like to think the soothing music helps. It certainly made me smile.

This morning I was filmed for TV

Here I am with Brooke (the lifestyle correspondent for Better Portland) and Eric (the man behind the camera). They were a great team, very friendly and professional and casual. I cannot say enough good things about Eric and Brooke - the were great to work with. It was relatively fun! I made a ring for Brooke while we chatted about the Portland Saturday Market and my business. The shop was alive with action, there were a 4 lovely ladies torchworking and another 4 people were working on some glass fusing projects. I am not usually in the studio on Monday mornings (after a long weekend vending at the Portland Saturday Market I stay home Monday morning) so it was fun to see so many friendly faces! I hope they all enjoyed (or at least didn't mind too much) having a FOX tv crew up in their space!

Oh I forgot to mention this will air October 16th at 1pm on Fox 12 Better

Rainy Saturday at the Portland Saturday Market

Saturday was a rainy morning at the Portland Saturday Market. Classic local weather... a constant drizzle, occasional real rain, persisting for hours. It was drab, and wet. I am getting used to my new/used tent and the top collects water, which I have to spill out in little waterfalls. Kinda scary. These tents do that! I have ideas though, techniques that will improve this situation... the tighter I get the corners - the more taught I can get the top to pull (which decreases pooling water) and also my neighbor had a great make-shift use of some clamps to push the canopy up. Oh yeah. Next time I will do better. This Saturday I was soggy. Did I mention the seams leak in my new top as well? Terribly. I was pretty wet.

Anyhow - the weather spiffed up a bit in the afternoon. It was actually a nice day after about 3pm. We had some great entertainment at the market - these guys rocked out. I meant to buy their CD and the picture here doesn't show their name. Woops. Any shout outs to who these guys were?

What Am I Doing Monday Morning? Filming for local Fox TV show!

I am going to be on KPTV Fox channel 12 sometime soon... filming is this coming Monday at the Aquila Glass School featuring me - local Portland Saturday Market vendor, glass artist, torchworking teacher, crafty-lady... so sometime soon a small segment will air on the show BETTER (I will update with video when its available)

This TV appearance has been organized by Reid Decker, the advertising coordinator for the Portland Saturday Market - thanx Reid.

Hope it's fun... I've never worked with "Better" before, the show airs at 1pm on weekdays. I gather its sorta like a locally oriented daytime news show. I am all about advertising in any way I can!

How do I deal with my scrap?

Today I continued to attack my scrap glass piles (its all gems of colorful goodness, just dirty and sharp and needing TLC). This time I took pictures!

Above you can see how I am dealing with a bunch of blue scrap. The blue bin was so full that I had to deal with some of it - otherwise I couldn't sort any more scrap bucket cuz there was no room for blue in the blue bin! Oh no! So what I do (and I am much more productive when my dear Aimee helps me!) is cut the funny shaped bits up into regular sizes of squares and triangles. These bits are then put in containers for quick access.

Today I even cleaned the glass as I went!! (clearly this is not something I enjoy doing) For a while I had been lubricating the scoring device with mineral spirits, but when I realized how freakin' toxic the fumes from this substance (thanx Jan for educating me!!!) I switched to vegetable oil. Then my friend Denis invested in some great blue glass cutting lubricant that is water soluble (so it washes off the glass really nicely!) - that is what I use now, so most of the scrap is really easy to clean. However the scrap that was covered in vegetable oil now is covered in dust and dirt and glass splinters. And the vegetable oil/silica combo has turned into some sort of strange resin. Its not easy to clean off. I tried the normal glass cleaner (a vinegar water concoction), then warm soapy water, finally I scraped the shit off. The ironic part is that the toxic brain killer mineral spirit I was using in the first place would make a great cleaner to get the strange vegetable oil/silica turned resin off the glass. Hmph. I hate cleaning.
Anyhow - here I am sorting out the bucket... big paint bucket filled weighs 50lbs... I sort it by color so I can then use the glass up. You can see I have laid big crates around to collect the glass bits, they stack nicely and hold a lot of pieces... I've used smaller plastic ice cream tubs for the colors I have less of (like white)...

Then the next step is what was pictured first... I take the glass and clean it up a bit and cut it up more into pieces: square and triangles in sizes that I use to make mini mobiles and earrings.

Scrap

scrap2
Originally uploaded by LeahPellegrini

Yesterday my dear friend Aimee met me at the studio to sort scrap. Whew. I had stopped at Ikea and purchased six clear plastic containers for Red Orange Yellow Green Blue Purple. These do not really do the job entirely, but I like them :)

Its dirty work. I forgot to take pictures! My hands were covered in glass dust and dirt and oil (oil lubricates the cutter). Most of the scraps are from cutting circles, so its sharp corner bits from the outsides of circles.

I'll take more pictures later to show the mayhem.

the dress I found

This is the dress I found to wear to my cousin's wedding. Its creme and black printed fabric with black trim. The fabric is beautiful, sort of a paisley lotus flower kind of thing - rocking out in B/W, well creme, but still. I altered the straps to fit me properly - oooh - I still need to sew them down! They are safety-pinned at the moment :) This is the nicest thing I've ever bought from the Goodwill (it hadn't even been worn before, still had tags on it) - do I dare mention it was only $20!!

I found shoes at Marshalls and a shawl from the import market downtown, each only cost me $20. I am now prepared for this fall wedding and no budgets were broken - for shizzle! Yeah!